A new glimpse of the Charlie rudder pedals, designed and manufactured by Honeycomb Aeronautical, has been unveiled as part of a couple of posts addressing poor customer service.

On Saturday, Honeycomb made a public apology on the basis their customers were not getting responses to service tickets.

They said they are backlogged by over 1,500 tickets, most of which were said to be “where can I buy your product?” and “when does my Bravo get delivered?”.

The knock-on effect to this is that customers of their Alpha flight controls who have genuine problems are not “getting the service they deserve,” said Honeycomb.

“If you are one of those people, please accept our apologies. We are prioritizing you but we can't tell which is which until we open the ticket.

“We're on schedule for delivery of the Bravo as planned. The availability of Alpha's is fluid and we can't tell you what our resellers back order situation is.”

That post was closed off with a plea to users that asked users to be mindful of others who have more pressing issues.

Honeycomb added further information in yesterday’s follow-up post.

“Anyone who has an address change or cancelation request will be contacted prior to shipment (we're still a month away from shipping).

“We are in the process of increasing our tech support team with skilled community members. Just hiring a tech support company doesn't meet our quality criteria. I appreciate all the suggestions on how to fix it and the offers to help, but we have to solve this problem through a proper process and not just short term panic reaction.

“Prior to the Bravo pre-order campaign, we had a tech support rate of 0.2% of products sold. We have had 15 times the volume in the last month, that we've had totally in the last year. We were not prepared for that and that is our fault.

“I am humbled by the support and understanding from the flight sim community and I fully understand the frustration of the people that have been impacted by our shortcomings. Trust me, we will make it right.”

As a further apology, Honeycomb provided a new preview of Charlie which is to be the next in their line of flight simulation peripherals.

The rudder pedals was originally intended to be announced at FlightSimExpo 2020, but the cancellation of the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic meant an early reveal of the product.

They are expected to be officially revealed in the “next couple of weeks.”

Honeycomb Aeronautical can be followed on Facebook and Twitter.